THE
TRANSPORTER ROOM
Your journey to the great beyond begins here. Sitting at the base of the Hopservatory, the transporter room is decorated with beautiful mosaic tiling depicting the wonders of our universe: speeding comets, space ships, and planets. The center mosaic column (which supports the telescope two stories above) portrays the beauty of our planet as seen through the eyes of interstellar travelers. Marbleized Venetian plaster walls replicate a slice of Earth as it rises from the core up through the terrestrial strata towards the stars and beyond, inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
But what's it all about? The cosmos contain awe-inspiring phenomena, but we want visitors to look out into that vast space and see just how cold, distant, and inhospitable it all is compared to our own planet. We want you to leave with the impression that our universe is beautiful, but our home planet is irreplaceable.
Ascend along the enchanting spiral staircase, traversing two stories to reach the upper deck. (handicap access via elevator) Prepare to be enraptured by one of Bend's most splendid vistas, a breathtaking panorama that stretches from the majestic Mount Bachelor to the Mount Hood.
Tours take you inside the 16-foot fully automatic, rotating Ash dome to view planets, galaxies, star clusters, nebulae, the moon, and the sun through our reflecting and refracting telescopes. The sliding aperture is open only during programs to protect equipment inside, and the dome is not heated - as heat and heatwaves can alter telescope functions - be sure to dress warmly during the winter months!
THE
DOME
THE
TELESCOPES
Our main telescope is a 16-inch Ritchey-Chretién reflector, the same type as the Hubble space telescope. The large aperture allows us to gather plenty of light to see very faint and very distant objects. Mounted on a pier to clear the height of the dome walls, visitors must scale a short ladder to an elevated platform to look directly through the eyepiece. We also have a 4-inch refracting telescope mounted to the side of our main telescope that gives more crisp & wider fields of view. Thanks to the wonders of technology, our telescope can automatically find and track almost any object in the night sky! Viewable objects change seasonally.
To safely view the Sun, we use a Hydrogen Alpha solar telescope on a tripod. This telescope has protective filters to keep us safe as we view details on the solar surface like sunspots, solar flares, prominences, and filaments.
